Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Where do we go from here? Depending on one’s perspective, the American story can plausibly be interpreted in different ways. Looked at from past to present , we can see a great deal of continuity from medieval Christendom and the Reformation to America’s founding. The War for Independence, after all,…
Click HERE for Part 1 Civic Religion: American or Christian? We have already traced out the basic contours of the shift in America from an ecclesiocentric, theocratic social order to a secular one. Building on Locke and Hobbes, the Enlightenment accomplished an astonishing coup of Christendom. That victory for the…
Author’s Introductory Note: Engaging in broad historical interpretation as I am about to do is always risky. Necessarily, one “stylizes” history by simplifying, over generalizing, and stereotyping. But the narrative qualities of history are not simply due to the imposition of human rationality upon brute facts; rather history is always…
A. Repentance to life involves endeavoring to believe real hard that you’re saved. reject infant baptism. stop watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. walk with God in all the ways of his commandments. B. What is necessary so that no sinner may expect to be forgiven unless he does it? Only…
The machine works mechanically and it is flawless. Slander/libel a group of Presbyterian ministers as “Romanist” because robes and James 2 are no worse than praying to Mary or relying on purgatory to pay for unconfessed sins. Drive off anyone who disagrees. Of that number, there may be a tiny…
If we take as a starting point the Tribal / Monarchical / Empire model, we can then add to it the Late Empire Phase. The particular ‘marker sin’ of Empire is false intermarriage, which signifies pluralism and syncretism. Empires by definition are “cosmopolitan” dominated by cities, high culture, many cultures,…
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Paul Fiddes ( The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) , 7) repeats a truism when he writes, “Poetic metaphor and narrative rejoice in ambiguity and the opening up of multiple meaning; doctrine will always seek to reduce to concepts the images and stories upon…
Rosenstock-Huessy ( The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun (The Cloister Library) , 130) note that language, like all life, deteriorates naturally “from inspiration to routine”: “Every time we speak we eiyther renew or cheapen the words we use.” Christian language is no exception: “Christian language can be abused…
Repetition is not itself bad, Rosenstock-Huessy says ( The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun (The Cloister Library) , 80-1): “Life itself rests on a certain balance between recurrent and novel processes; the former are our fixed capital investment, the latter our free range of choice, selection, change, at…
Exodus 28:32-33: Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, at the doorway of the tent of meeting. Thus they shall eat those things by which atonement was made at their ordination and consecration; but a layman shall not…
You are priests, ordained to priesthood by baptism, which united you to Jesus Christ, the High Priest of a priestly community. When Aaron and his sons were ordained, Moses smeared blood on their right ear lobes, their right thumbs, their right bog toes. Their ears, hands, and feet became holy…
In his study of The Passions of Christ in High-Medieval Thought: An Essay on Christological Development (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) , Kevin Madigan concludes that on the issues of the human passions of Christ the scholastic theologians did not unpack what was implicit in patristic Christological. Rather, “high-medieval christological…
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